At the futures conference I spoke on Globalization - specifically how college courses need to morph to properly prepare students for today and tomorrow's work. The reception, hospitality and quality of the event were outstanding and I am so thankful I get invited to these kinds of events. I learn so much listing to other speakers and talking with attendees.

Last week was the two day visiting committee meeting - larger National Science Foundation grants are required to appoint a National Visiting Committee (NVC) that meets once a year. According to the NVC Handbook published by the Evaluation Center at Western Michigan University, these committees are groups of advisors that work with grantees and NSF to help them achieve their goals and objectives. They assess the plans and progress of the project and report to NSF and the project leadership. Committee members also provide advice to the project staff and may serve asadvocates for effective projects.

At the NVC meeting, among many things, we had a lot of excellent discussion about current and future of converged communications and networks - what many are now calling unified communications/networking. I'd like to especially thank President Cary A. Israel and Executive Vice PresidentToni Jenkins from Collin College along with Director Ann Beheler, Ann Blackman, Helen Sullivan, etc, etc from the Convergence Technology Center at Collin College for their hospitality, commitment, work, understanding and dedication to their students. It's always wonderful to see excellent work being done - especially when it is funded with taxpayer dollars.Here's one photo of NVC student lunch presenters (click to enlarge) taken on Thursday - each a different story and each incredibly EXCELLENT is all I can say. You can check out my iPhone Tumblr photoblog of both events (and a lot of other events) at http://gsnyder.tumblr.com/ - scroll down to see all photos.

I'll get back on my five per week (or so) blog schedule this week - I've got a bunch of them started and I'm not going anywhere for the next couple of weeks!

In 2001, I was selected as one of the top 15 STEM faculty in the United States by Microsoft and the American Association of Community Colleges and in 2004 was selected as the Massachusetts Network and Communications Council Workforce Leader of the year.